Crawfish boils grace Vieux Carre corner

ELLIS LUCIA / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Ray Hummel and Dave Johnson do a crawfish boil every Monday from 4-7 p.m. on the corner of Gov. Nicholls and Burgundy streets, near Cosimo's bar.

Some say the crawfish became king among exiled Acadians, who settled in southwest Louisiana and became known as Cajuns, when Maine lobsters followed the refugees from Nova Scotia and shrank in size during their long, arduous journey. Indeed, crawfish look like tiny, miniature lobsters, but, in my opinion, our mudbugs taste better.

Crawfish boils happen in courtyards, backyards and patios, but in the French Quarter, a street corner makes do. Ray Hummel and Dave Johnson do a crawfish boil every Monday from 4-7 p.m. on the corner of Gov. Nicholls and Burgundy streets, near Cosimo's bar.

The street scene transforms as people gather around a table to peel crawfish tails and suck the heads. Newspaper serves as a tablecloth, and paper towels, which I call Cajun napkins, make chin wiping and running-down-the-arm juice easy to swipe.

Hummel boils his crawdads with special seasonings, corn, onions, potatoes and, my favorite, heads of garlic, which I smear on potatoes like butter.

David Beechler, a retired bounty hunter whose family came here with Iberville in the early 1700s, recently stopped eating long enough to say "This is why New Orleans is called the Paris of the New World."

The old French word for crawfish was escrevisse. Louisiana produces 90 percent of crawfish in the world with 70 percent of the mudbugs consumed locally.